Jericho Recap: Why We Fight
This is it. In Coalition of the Willing, it seemed like the battle was coming. Now it is. We also don't really know if there will be any further Jericho after tonight, but that may not matter, because this might just be the end of it all. Unfortunately we have to sit through a bunch of nonsense about how Eric married April and Jake became the number one bad boy. But who cares? Jericho is just about the best show ever, and it's going to come to a head.
Even better, we get to meet Grandpa Green. He is so cool he overcomes the wimpiness that is Eric. It just leaves you wondering how Eric came out of the same bloodline. Maybe he didn't. But that's for another story, another time (probably never, but hey - it sounds good). What I - and everyone else - wants to know is why all the coolest of the Green clan end up dead. If anyone deserves to live in that family, it was Grandpa Green. That man had more cool in his few minutes of screen time than most of the rest of the residents of Jericho. But I digress. There's a war happening, people!
The other cool cat in town (that would be Hawkins) hacks into the satellite to track the whereabouts of the New Bern troops, since they have to be just about on top of Jericho by now. For what seems to be most of the episode, he's hanging out in his crib, sending morse code signals on his Radio Shack walkie-talkie to Jake and the gang, all while he tries not to get caught. Lucky for him all those higher-ups can't figure out how to track him very quickly. Good thing he bought the anti-tracker decoder ring at the mall.
Meanwhile, the Jericho Tank comes out of the barn (I was wondering if they'd ever pull it back into action) and the New Bern Crew rusn back into hiding until they figure that the tank can fire like once, while they have trainloads of mortars. Then Poppa Green takes one for the team, and that's what really rallies the troops. Isn't it always that way? Why can't they get going before the cool people get shot and killed? Anyway, as dad dies on the Richmond table, Jake steps up to be the man he was meant to be and gets all the Jericho lackeys to back him up, which is just what the people from New Bern didn't need.
Connie says that he'll give Jake one last chance to surrender, but it's too late now. He might have had a chance to make peace happen before he killed his dad, but not now. As helicopters come in, the war starts in earnest, and Jake has just one word for Connie: Nuts.
Update: Over the coming weeks, fans of Jericho sent tons of peanuts (apparently more than 10,000 pounds in all) to the offices of CBS in order to save their show. It worked. Jericho was given a second chance, and will return in some form for a second season. We'll have to see how that shapes up.
